Welcome to the SETI Institute

Wondering whether to vaccinate your children? The decision can feel like a shot in the dark if you don’t know how to evaluate risk. Find out why all of us succumb to pitfalls in reasoning; whether we’re saying no to vaccines or getting a tan on the beach.

Wondering whether to vaccinate your children? The decision can feel like a shot in the dark if you don’t know how to evaluate risk. Find out why all of us succumb to pitfalls in reasoning; whether we’re saying no to vaccines or getting a tan on the beach.

He was everyone’s favorite (half-) alien. A Vulcan with a penchant for logical insight, delivered in the flat tone that was presumed to characterize an advanced species, Mr. Spock defined “extraterrestrial intelligence” for a generation. Now Leonard Nimoy, who created a personality that dominated his career in the minds of many, has died at the age of 83.

One of the most appealing places in the solar system to hunt for life has become even more so. The discovery of plumes of icy material erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa has sparked new enthusiasm for sending spacecraft to this famous cracked-and-crazed ice ball to search for traces of life, dead or alive.

During the Ambassadors program, 28 educators – from both classrooms and informal venues such as museums and planetariums – will be taken aloft onboard NASA’s SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) aircraft, and will spend hours monitoring and interacting with the astronomers

SETI Institute research scientist Michael Busch used radar transmitters to perform an observation known as radar speckle tracking, a technique that uses the seemingly chaotic radar pattern reflected by the uneven surface of the asteroid to measure how it spins.

In the giant impact hypothesis, the Moon accretes from a disk around the proto-Earth. Sarah discusses the unusual state of the Earth after a high angular momentum impact: a continuous pressure- and rotationally-supported fluid-to-vapor structure from the mantle to the disk.

Experts will be discussing the merits and concerns of so-called Active SETI as well as the societal implications of searching for life in the solar system during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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What we know about our universe is changing all the time. New discoveries are happening more now than at any time in our history as humans.

We know that you want to see the inner workings of the research that's done at our facilites and our scientists want to share their work with you as it happens. For as little as $20 per month, you'll get more access to the SETI Institute and The Carl Sagan center than ever before. Plus right now, as a donor you'll get some of the great perks with our Communicate campaign - Like T-Shirts and window clings to show your friends that you care about discovery and exploration.

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Meet Our Scientists

Dale Andersen is the American leader of a joint US/Soviet expedition to Antarctica. He has spent six months with a multinational, multicultural crew in this remote, hostile environment, carrying out research relevant to the search for life on Mars.